04.27.10
deeply outdated links
I’ve been ignoring this blog, of late. Apologies to my handful of subscribers. Fear not – exams are upon me, and the opportunities for procrastination presented by blogging are too delectable to pass up upon. With that in mind, I’m working on a fairly mammoth post about the upcoming election, proportional representation, and what’s truly at stake on May 6th.
In the meanwhile, pray indulge me a few quick links to some stuff I’ve been working on recently.
First up, here’s a gigantic retrospective article on the making of Halo 2 which I wrote for Eurogamer to commemorate the closing of the original Xbox Live service earlier this month. Bungie were amazingly helpful in writing the feature and gave me fantastic access to the original developers of the game. It’s been known for years that Halo 2 had a tortured development process – the feature, I think, puts some meat on those bones and demonstrates just how close the team came to utter disaster in the years after Halo’s breakout success.
(I love writing features like that. My favourite task for all of last year was writing Eurogamer’s mammoth World of Warcraft retrospective feature (that link takes you to part one – part two is here). They seem to do pretty good traffic too, by all accounts. Editors, commission more of them!)
Secondly, here’s a feature I wrote on the current troubles at Infinity Ward, the studio which made last year’s billion-dollar hit, Modern Warfare 2. It’s all about how this saga is an expression of a deeper struggle in the creative industries – one between a philosophy which says you must nurture your creative talent, and a rival philosophy which says that if you own the copyright, you can always hire new, cheaper talent. If you don’t want to register for GamesIndustry.biz (it’s free, though), you could read it on Eurogamer instead.
On a similar note, here’s a piece I wrote in the aftermath of the Digital Economy Bill being passed by Parliament – on why stupid, badly considered law like this is damaging, but ultimately pointless, since it amounts to trying to hold back the tide by holding out your hands and shouting. The Internet has changed culture as profoundly as the invention of recordings did in the first place – companies sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending otherwise are, ultimately, doomed. That one’s on Eurogamer, too.
We’ve also done quite a few episodes of Stage Clear since I last updated. We’re winding down to the end, now – we’ve recorded our last “normal” episode (Season 2, Episode 13), and we did a live show at an event in Southampton a couple of weeks ago which should be posted on the site shortly. One more studio show (in London, with the wonderful GameWank guys as special guests and co-hosts), and possibly another live show, and then I’m off to Japan for a year – at which point we go on extended hiatus.
Whether the show returns depends largely on two factors – whether anyone wants it to, and whether co-host Perrin and I can maintain this sham of a so-called friendship for that long.
Proper blog post in the next couple of days. I promise.
